Our View: Eat your veggies

Friday

Aug 8, 2014 at 12:01 AM

Agriculture was the top priority for the Pilgrims in the spring of 1621, and without the skilled Wampanoag tribe's advice on how to coax good yields from the rocky, nutrient-poor soil, it likely would have taken longer for Europeans to gain a foothold in New England.

Agriculture was the top priority for the Pilgrims in the spring of 1621, and without the skilled Wampanoag tribe's advice on how to coax good yields from the rocky, nutrient-poor soil, it likely would have taken longer for Europeans to gain a foothold in New England.

But ancient native cultivation practices gave the Pilgrims the keys to sustainable food production, and the region has long yielded bountifully.

In fact, according to a food system assessment released by the South­eastern Massachusetts Food Security Network last week, Bristol County continues to do so, harvesting on 10,000 acres on 717 farms in 2012, ranked 32nd out of all U.S. counties for total direct market sales.

The incongruity in the report, however, is that annual per capita spending on food bought at farm stands, farmers markets and Community Supported Agriculture plans in Southeastern Massachusetts — Bristol, Plymouth and Norfolk counties — was an astonishingly low $5.02.

And with 98 percent of all vegetable crops in the region going to the fresh market, it appears there are a couple of important bottlenecks in the system.

First, the population needs to eat more locally grown vegetables. It supports local growers, uses less fuel and provides more reliable nutrition.

Second, there need to be more farmers. The Food Security Network report points out that the number of farmers in the region has decreased, though acreage has increased, since 2007, but almost all they grow is being sold directly to the public.

One solution to both of these pinch points can be found in an environmental bond bill that authorizes, among other things, $5 million to establish an Eastern Regional Center for Urban Sustainability at Bristol County Agricultural High School in Dighton.

Urban residents would be the direct beneficiaries of urban agriculture — community gardens, schoolyard gardens and mill-based commercial operations — for all the reasons noted above.

At the Aggie School, where the largest percentage of the student body is from Taunton, Attleboro, Fall River and New Bedford (though the county's agricultural communities are certainly well represented), enrollment is in the process of expanding, which means more farmers.

As it is now, Southeastern Mass. seems able to eat all its farms are producing — more than half of 1,786 acres of production going toward sweet corn and squashes, same as the Wampanoag.

Money invested in urban agriculture that encourages production and consumption will promote physical, environmental and economic good health.